Visual Arts Scholarships

ROSL ARTS works within the original mandate of its founder to ‘maintain social and cultural links worldwide’ and through our Visual Art Scholarships we look to bring international creativity to the UK. In 2018 we are pleased to announce that we are bringing our scholarships to the North of England as we partner with The Art House in Wakefield. The open call for 2018 is currently closed.

Our 2018 Scholars are:

Joey Chin

Joey Chin is a writer and artist in Singapore. Her mixed-language poems have appeared in Drunken Boat, Hayden’s Ferry Review, QLRS, The Missing Slate, Sweet Lit, Anthropology and Humanism, and The Transnational among many others.

Her conceptual works interrogate the narratives, reading and memoirs of spaces in urban living. It also evaluates personal communications between the self and markings of territoriality.

She has presented her writings, art and academic research in poetry, cross-cultural creative writing and text-based conceptual art in Singapore, China, Japan, Greece and the United States.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the City University of Hong Kong, and her work has received grants from the Dorothy Cheung Foundation, the National Arts Council and an award in the Ethnographic Poetry Prize by the American Anthropological Association.

Buhle Wonder Mbambo

Buhle Wonder Mbambo born 1989 in South Africa, is a Durban-based visual artist from Kwa-Ngcolosi one of the villages which is still ruled under a chief.

Having started art as a hobby at the age of nine, Mbambo was encouraged by his mother to further explore art as a career as he use to play a lot with charcoal from firewood making stick man drawings on the walls of the house as a kid.He received his first formal training through the BAT Centre Artists in Residency (AIR) Program, after he studied fine art through the Velobala apprenticeship program at Durban University of Technology, under the mentorship of Themba Shibase.

The current theme influencing work is Ukumisa insika “ grooming the one that will be the pillar of the family “bread winner” or the one that will be the leader of the nation. He looks at this theme from a very personal perspective, assessing his own position within the family structure and the wider landscape of his home in South Africa.

The focus of these scholarships is networking and creative development with the ambition to provide the scholars an opportunity to focus and create in a new environment. The Art House has a remit focusing on diversity and access, ensuring the residency provides opportunities for artists of all abilities from around the world. Spanning over 2 months, the artists will be provided funding and allowed time to visit creative spaces across the country and meet their peers working in similar fields. In this new format our ambition is to instigate opportunities for artists through sharing and networking while providing time and space to develop creatively in a calm, productive and connected environment.

The Art House building, Wakefield

Our previous format and partners.

The Visual Arts Scholarship developed from the ROSL Annual Exhibition that began in 1984. This exhibition selected the work of artists from the Commonwealth to be presented in a single, uniting exhibition. This exhibition was then restructured in 2000, presenting a group show at the OXO in London while introducing a month-long residency for some of the overseas artists to come to the UK and stay at Hospitalfield in Arbroath. In 2013 the scholarships were again refreshed to maintain the residency but also offer the opportunity to develop a public project with a respected commissioning organisation. For many years with this structure we invited partner visual arts organisations to nominate early career artists from within the Commonwealth to attend the residency and present a final exhibition. In this format we have worked with organisations that include The Grundy, Blackpool; Glasgow International Festival, Glasgow; Camden Art Centre, London; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee and Iniva, London. For a full list of scholars and partners see our Visual Arts Alumni page.

2017 brought Madiha Aijaz and Stephanie Hier to Scotland for residencies and they will return to complete an exhibition in 2018, Aijaz with Liverpool Biennial and Hier with David Dale Gallery in Glasgow.